Lot Essay
"Ratapoil was not a person, but a political concept. Gustave Geffroy called him the resumé of an epoch, the agitator who prepared the coup d'état. For Daumier, Ratapoil exemplified the agent provacateur, the hired bully, who by means of threats and bribes, rounded up the votes which gave Louis Napoléon's power." (J. L. Wasserman, op. cit.)
Daumier's original terracotta model dates from circa 1850. Daumier's colleague Victor Geoffroy-Deschaume took two plaster casts from the original and, after the artist's death, used one as the mould for a small numbered bronze edition cast by Siot-Decauville. The same plaster then passed from Madame Daumier to Armand Dayot, Arsène Alexandre, Roger Miles and Henry Bing. Bing used it to make an edition of twenty numbered bronzes, cast by Eugène Rudier, using his father's name Alexis.
Daumier's original terracotta model dates from circa 1850. Daumier's colleague Victor Geoffroy-Deschaume took two plaster casts from the original and, after the artist's death, used one as the mould for a small numbered bronze edition cast by Siot-Decauville. The same plaster then passed from Madame Daumier to Armand Dayot, Arsène Alexandre, Roger Miles and Henry Bing. Bing used it to make an edition of twenty numbered bronzes, cast by Eugène Rudier, using his father's name Alexis.